In the process of providing health care, clinicians often make physical observations and run tests to gather data about a patient. After collecting data and analyzing other aspects, such as a given patient's health history, the clinician often forms a diagnosis and then selects a therapy to treat the diagnosed condition.
The ability of clinicians to gather data about a patient has increased rapidly over time as devices, assays, and associated procedures have advanced. Yet, clinicians are still a long distance away from having complete health information about each patient. As merely one issue, the ability to gather data from or about a patient declines significantly when the patent is not in a clinical environment. Further, for most patients, the amount of time they spend in a clinical environment is relatively small compared to the time spent away from clinics, thus greatly limiting opportunities to gather data. Another issue is that not all disease states are fully characterized in terms of what pieces of data, that could be gathered, will provide diagnostic insight regarding the disease state.
While clinicians may never have complete health information about each patient, it is possible to increase the accuracy of health assessments and/or diagnoses by improving the nature and quantity of data available to clinicians.